The Northern Region Director of Ghana Health Service, Reverend Dr. Samuel Quarshie has finally been replaced after he was attacked and chased out of office several months ago by a vigilante force of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the region.
Dr. Quarshie left the region on March 20, 2018, after the NPP vigilante group, Kandahar Boys, violently disrupted a meeting he was chairing and asked him to vacate office and leave the region.
It was about the sixth state institution the terror group had attacked since the NPP took over power in 2017 under President Akufo-Addo.
Later, there were more attacks on state agencies and their heads, including one on the Chief Executive Officer of the Tamale Teaching Hospital Dr. David Akolbila, which sparked nationwide outrage and forced separate responses from the Jubilee House and NPP national leaders.
Dr. Quarshie, posted from the Central Region in 2017, had started to strictly enforce mechanisms for restoring professional discipline and genuine commitment to work in order to change the degrading narrative of poor service delivery in the regional health sector bedeviled with drugs shortages, lack of health facilities and personnel deficiency, but also widespread bitter power struggles in local administrations and hospitals and staff absenteeism at the regional directorate.
He had already resolved an escalating row over a medical superintendent position between two senior doctors at the Gushegu hospital. At Chereponi, Karaga, Bimbila, and Yendi, Dr. Quarshie mediated amicable resolutions that settled disputes between district management staff and hospital managers.
Dr. Quarshie was also dealing with high absenteeism and investigating reports of corruption and incompetence at the regional administration level. He began to receive threats from anonymous telephone callers immediately he launched an investigation into alleged nefarious activities in the regional medical store.
“So this is the point they felt that the man really means business and started to hire those boys to be sending him messages and calling to give me threats,” a senior director at the regional directorate who worked with Dr. Quarshie told Starr News.
“The issues at the medical stores came to his [Dr. Quarshie] attention,” he said, “and some staff too at the directorate were also staying at home and refusing to do their work, so he was compelled to put things right and that was where the conspiracy started.”
Kandahar Boys Attack
It was a Tuesday afternoon in March 2018. Dr. Quarshie reported to work but later in the night was forced to abandon his official residence to sleep at an unknown location after he encountered the most tensed and shocked moment of his entire career.
As he was chairing a restricted Entity Tender Committee meeting attended only by senior directors at the conference hall around 2 pm, about six-bag-carrying-men, later identified as members of the Kandahar Boys, arrived at the Directorate on motorbikes and came straight to the meeting ground.
The vigilante group verbally harassed Dr. Quarshie for nearly 30 minutes and later led him to his office to clear his table as they rejected desperate and passionate pleas from other members of the meeting including the regional state prosecutor.
The men were ordered to carry out a straightforward message to the director; to step down or face forceful removal.
The Kandahar Boys reportedly told the director they had received reports that “he is creating problems for people and not allowing people to work freely”, so they had come to drive him out.
Without any robust security arrangement at the directorate after the attack, Dr. Quarshie raised concerns over his personal safety and fled the region as ordered by the Kandahar Boys.
Ghana Health Service response
A month later, in April, the Director General of the Ghana Health Service Dr. Nsiah Anthony summoned the regional director and sanctioned him to proceed on indefinite leave after charging him for desertion of post.
Dr. Quarshie later received a letter relieving him of his post after failed backchannels with the Kandahar Boys. He is since being recalled and posted to the national headquarters.
Security Expert condemns the development
Security Analyst Adid Saani, condemned the development as “sad” and “worrying”, adding that the decision to remove the director is a major victory to the vigilante community and would embolden their operations.
“That’s very worrying because if you have them going to take over a health facility or just take out an officer in that manner and the next minute the officer is also relieved of his position, you’ve cowed to the whims and caprices of these groups and it further emboldens them,” he said.
“It sends wrong signals that look, you can do anything you like and they will listen to us. And the fact that they’ve done this and succeeded, their comrades in other parts of the country; those in Volta Region, Bono Ahafo Region, Eastern Region, will go like, ‘our people in Tamale did it so why can’t we also do it’.
“And I’m very saddened because we are a country that is governed by the rule of law. We have processes and procedures to follow when you are disgruntled over any issue, and there are structures for seeking redress rather than take the law into your own hands.”
The Director-General, Dr. Asare, and the Ghana Health Service were not available to comment and Dr. Quarshie also refused Starr News request for comments. A Spokesman for the Kandahar Boys also rejected demands for a response.
The New Director
Fairly looking young with over two decades experience in the health sector, Dr. J.B. Elezah has been posted as the new director to succeed Dr. Quarshie. Starting as a young medical doctor, he lived most of his professional life working in most difficult terrains in the Volta Region, occupying many positions before he moved to the Central Regional directorate as a deputy director.
He is married with about five children and was posted to the Northern Region in December, about six months after the forceful removal of his predecessor.
“I’m here to work and I don’t think I’m here to be roaming in town, and I also believe my destiny is not tied to anyone’s,” Dr. Elezah told Starr News, in his first sit down interview with the press.
When asked whether he has firm control over the staff at the Directorate, he said: “I’m just three months in office so I cannot say I have total control over my staff but I tell you I’m capable of taking any decision.”
Dr. Elezah then laid out what he hopes to achieve for the region with the highest health indicators.
“I will make sure that wherever there are challenges, my team will try to address those things because those are the bottlenecks as far as our performance are concerned. And we started identifying them one by one; placement of some people, then we move people to place that we think they will be more useful to the service and we believe that will help change some of the outcomes we are having.”
Source: Ghana/Starrfmonline.com/103.5FM/Eliasu Tanko
